CHAPTER I

EARLY LIFE


The man whose history is here recorded was for more than forty years a
commanding figure upon the theatre of English public life; a politician,
who in the councils of a powerful Ministry exercised an influence more
than proportioned to the offices he held; a statesman, who brought to
triumphant issue many wise projects, and whose authority, even when he was
a private member of Parliament, continued to be recognized not only among
all parties of his countrymen, but also throughout Europe: yet, when he
died, all thought and spoke not of what he had achieved, but of what he
had missed.

To write the biography of one so marked by a special malignity of fate is
a difficult task. That bare justice may be done, it is necessary not only
to follow out his openly recorded successes, things done in his own name
and of his own right, but also to disentangle, as far as may be, the part
which his authority, his knowledge, and his ceaseless industry played in
framing and securing measures whose enactment redounded to the credit of
other men. But above all, since a man's personality signifies far more
than his achievements, and this man stands before the world overshadowed
by a dishonouring accusation, it is necessary to establish by facts and by
testimony not so much what he did as what he was.

Yet it must not be supposed that he himself counted his career among
life's failures. The record will tell of close and affectionate family
ties; of a wonderfully vivid and varied experience acquired in many lands